My name is Mason Porter. I am a Professor in Nordita (Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics) and am Professor in Complex Systems in the Department of Mathematics at Stockholm University. Previously, I was a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at UCLA. Before that, I was Professor of Nonlinear and Complex Systems in the Mathematical Institute at University of Oxford. I was also a Tutorial Fellow of Somerville College. I am still a Senior Research Fellow of Somerville College.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Let's party like it's 1999...
Somerville College recently agreed on a 999-year lease of a property. This will expire when Oxford turns 1999. (For those across the pond, this year is the city's 1000th anniversary. This goes right with our previous conversations about length contraction and time dilation in the UK versus the US...) And when the lease expires, we're going to party like it's 1999!
Is there anything interesting about this piece of property that prompted the absurdly long lease?
ReplyDeleteOverall, I'd say this shows a charming faith in the continuity of the British government, considering it's less than 999 years old still. I can think of only a tiny number of situations in history where a 999 year old contract might have remained valid and enforceable...
I haven't got a clue. I was sort of viewing it like the old-fashioned criminal sentences expressed in units of lifetimes (with >1 lifetime, so that we're only considering nontrivial cases).
ReplyDeleteI don't actually know anything about the piece of property.